ABSTRACT
Passengers have faced a history of discrimination in transportation systems. Peer transportation
companies such as Uber and Lyft present the opportunity to rectify long-standing discrimination
or worsen it. We sent passengers in Seattle, WA and Boston, MA to hail nearly 1,500 rides on
controlled routes and recorded key performance metrics. Results indicated a pattern of
discrimination, which we observed in Seattle through longer waiting times for African American
passengers—as much as a 35 percent increase. In Boston, we observed discrimination by Uber
drivers via more frequent cancellations against passengers when they used African Americansounding
names. Across all trips, the cancellation rate for African American sounding names was
more than twice as frequent compared to white sounding names. Male passengers requesting a
ride in low-density areas were more than three times as likely to have their trip canceled when
they used a African American-sounding name than when they used a white-sounding name. We
also find evidence that drivers took female passengers for longer, more expensive, rides in
Boston. We observe that removing names from trip booking may alleviate the immediate problem
but could introduce other pathways for unequal treatment of passengers.